Zombie Swipeout

The developers behind Zombie Smash never intended to go into video games. Back in 2008, Matthias Hoechsmann was a German researcher working at a lab in UC Santa Cruz. He was studying extremophiles, remarkable organisms that are capable of living in inhospitable environments such as acidic lakes and hydrothermal vents.

But then the iPhone came out and it turned the lives of Hoechsmann and his brother upside down. Avid gamers since they were children, the two saw an opportunity in the smartphone, and the two quit their respective jobs and founded a studio called Gamedoctors. Together they published the aforementioned title, and it was an immediate hit, topping the iTunes Store charts on every continent.